Tatting, digi-scrapping and reading....it's summer!

Time for an update! The very warm weather has abated, it's actually chilly after dark now. Such great sleeping weather- and yet the beach calls in the afternoon sun- PERFECT!

Above is my progress on tatting motif #6 for the 25 Motif challenge. It is going slow, but I am pleased. It should be done by my self-imposed deadline of this weekend.

Last weekend included a wonderful day spent with my aunt and some of my cousins on Long Beach Island on Friday, and a return visit on Sunday for a memorial Mass for my cousin Helen on the 10th anniversary of her death. Brunch at my aunt's followed and it was terrific to spend time with so many of my cousins- they are all terrific, wonderfully warm people.

These two pages are from Universal Visitation Day at CD in 2008. They were done for a challenge on the Facebook page of Polaroid's My Memories Suite- one of the two digital scrapbooking programs I use and love. My favorite is always the one I am currently using, lol! This challenge was to use the templates that come with the MMS program- which I am just, finally, learning to use (thanks, Lisa!) and really, REALLY liking!

It is nice now to have pictures of my classroom filled with kids. I have more like this and will be making more pages.

I've also been doing a lot of reading. Just finished a murder mystery, which I read mostly out of curiosity when I saw that one of the authors was Cordelia Biddle. Well, with that name, she could ONLY be a Philadelphia Biddle- related to St. Mother Katharine Drexel, those who founded Drexel University, the famous Philadelphia jewelry store, and "The Happiest Millionaire" as portrayed in a 1960's Disney movie, Anthony Drexel Biddle. It was a cute book, with some interesting looking crossword puzzles as the "hook" and it was prefect summer reading- no strain, just fun.

On a much more serious note, I am currently working my way through James Michener's "Poland", which is so interesting that it has captured me in spite of hardly being "summer reading". Michener often wrote books that dealt with the historical effects of geography and how history is created by a combination of geography and national culture. "Poland", which as a country I knew little about other than it's roles in WWII and the collapse of the Communist block, is another of his books that outline how geography can affect a nation's destiny. I was attracted to the book because I spent about a week in Poland in 1972 and was fascinated then by the way the Poles operated under the Russian communist regime- which was markedly different from what I saw in Czechoslovakia and Russia on the same trip.

The book spans 1000 years of Polish history, and like in so many of Michener's books (the man really was incredible in this way), I am seeing the almost inevitability of today in the history. I'm up to the late 17th century and have found myself several times thinking "that explains...." I've had this experience several times before while reading Michener- check out "Caravans" for some explanations of why we are in Afghanistan today.

I'm starting to change from receding and recovering from the trauma of the last school year to anxiety about the new one- a new school, a different type of schedule, unknown expectations from new bosses. Not fun!

But, I am also looking forward, with great joy, to the wedding this weekend of the youngest child and only daughter of my "oldest" friend. She is, lol, actually younger than me by a few months, but we've been friends since 1st grade and I love all her family like they were my own. It will be WONDERFUL to see everyone at such a happy event!

Time to get some late-afternoon sun and think about a trip to the beach!